The union that Hostess Brands Inc. says sparked the baking company’s demise thinks it still has a part to play in the reinvention of some of America’s most popular brands.

David Durkee, the president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, whose November strike crippled Hostess’s operations, Thursday expressed confidence that his thousands of out-of-work members will find opportunity at the pieces of Hostess that are currently being sold at auction.

“From our perspective, the situation in 2012 comes off as a position of strength,” Durkee said, referencing the nationwide work stoppage. He said he thinks the union should be able to get a better deal from the new, still-to-be-decided owners of brands like Wonder bread and Twinkies as compared to the labor contracts that Hostess offered up during its second bankruptcy case.

“We’re just as confident as the day we struck,” he said.

Durkee called his members’ willingness to say “enough was enough” and launch the strike that preceded the company’s decision to liquidate, an act of “incredible courage.” And he described the workers as being nearly irreplaceable to the businesses that end up snatching up Hostess assets at auction.

“Only our members know how to get that equipment running,” Durkee said. “A workforce off the street will not be able to accomplish that.”

The only way for the brands to have a “seamless restart” is to hire back the unionized bakers, he said. Hiring new workers would be risky, he said, adding that that gives his group bargaining power.

Who exactly will end up owning the various pools of intellectual property, equipment and plants that make up Hostess’s carcass is currently unclear. The company has announced lead bidders for nearly all of its brands, and the contests are set to take place in late February and early March. Some so-called stalking horse bidders, brought on to set a floor price for the assets, are food companies with no interest in buying Hostess plants, like McKee Foods Corp. The maker of Little Debbie snack cakes is bidding $27.5 million for Hostess’s Drake’s brand, which made treats like Devil Dogs, Ring Dings and Yodels, but Drake’s New Jersey plant isn’t included in the offer. Another potential buyer—Flowers Foods Inc., the lead bidder for a group of Hostess’s bread brands—is a traditionally non-union shop with few unionized workers. Flowers declined to comment.

Still, Durkee, himself a fourth-generation baker, is hopeful about the role the BCTGM will play in the next phase of Hostess’s existence.

“I think we’re in a much better position with new owners because of what we have to offer,” he said. “We have the workforce to get these plants online fast, efficiently, and get this product to market. We’re the only group of people who can do this. We think that adds very high value.”

Durkee said that while “hundreds” of Bakers members have gotten new jobs, the rest are receiving unemployment. Taking aim at what he sees as “horrendous, horrendous” concessions that Hostess won permission to impose on the BCTGM members during a bankruptcy labor trial, he said he thinks the unemployed BCTGM members are faring as well as they would have under the deal that was on the table.

“We’re not convinced that their income situation is any different than it would have been if they were working for the company,” he said.

Durkee and a union attorney were mum on some topics, refusing to comment on their interactions with the Hostess stalking-horse bidders or if they think the access they’ve been granted has been sufficient.

A Hostess spokesman declined to comment Thursday on the union president’s comments, as did a Flowers Foods spokesman. A representative for McKee Foods wasn’t immediately available for comment Apollo Global Management LLC, which is teaming up with Metropoulos & Co. to buy the bulk of Hostess’s cake assets, including Twinkie, declined to comment.

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